John Acton Wroth

John Acton Wroth (1830–1876) was a convict transportee to the Swan River Colony, and later a clerk and storekeeper in Toodyay, Western Australia.

He kept a personal diary that recorded life on board the transport ship and his experiences at the country hiring depots of York and Toodyay.

He may have wanted to impress upon Gartlett that he was a fashionable young man and to this end he sought means to acquire a gold watch and chain, and a pair of expensive boots.

He was sentenced to transportation for ten years for forging an order for goods, but first he had to spend nine months in solitary confinement, then time in the new Parkhurst gaol for juvenile offenders.

Wroth was transported to the Swan River Colony on Mermaid with over 200 other convicts and a contingent of Pensioner Guards and their families.

Wroth was described at the time as 20 years of age, 5 feet 6 inches (168 cm) tall, with brown hair and grey eyes.

[2]: 17–18 Following his arrival at Fremantle in May 1851 Wroth was sent to the York Convict Hiring Depot as a probationer prisoner working as a clerk.

Ellis was one of the emigrant girls brought out on the so-called "bride ships" to redress the shortage of young women in the colony.

[2]: 57  Their third son, Joseph Ablett Wroth (born in 1859), became a long serving and highly respected town clerk for the Municipality of Newcastle.

For a time he ran an evening school in Newcastle, before taking on the temporary role of teacher of his own children and those of Drummond's workmen until a government schoolmaster could be appointed.

His memory and contribution to Western Australia are honoured in one of the plaques laid down in St Georges Terrace as part of the state's 150th birthday celebrations.